Star Wars: A Family Torn Apart

I can hear the groans now. I know. First the Marvel Comics writers, then the Transformers writers, now you guys. My interests are rather wide. So it’s not hard for somebody, somewhere, to irritate me.

Reading my notes to the Marvel Comics writers, I’m sure you have some idea of what it’s like to tick me off.

You have landed on that list. I am very upset by what you have been doing of late.

So. Let’s get started, shall we?

A family torn apart. What do I mean by that? I mean the Solo clan, which has been all but shattered through the events of various novels. We’ll start with Chewie’s death. Yeah, I can see why the original characters would begin to die off; time passing and all that. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.

So in this R. A. Salvatore and I agree: killing Chewbacca was wrong.

Killing young Anakin Solo, who was not yet out of his teens, was even worse.

What was the purpose of that? I don’t think Han and Leia ever earned that stab in the gut. Anakin certainly hadn’t had time to earn it. He was a very interesting character. It would have been fun to watch him go gallivanting across the galaxy (preferably with Tahiri) being the Jedi his grandfather could have been. The galaxy would not have been the only group of people cheering him throughout.

But that’s not going to happen now.

Next we come to Jacen Solo. Jacen was supposed to be the gentlest of the three Solo children, the one most attuned to living things. Well, that got turned on its head after Anakin died, didn’t it? That must be why the youngest Solo child got the axe. One, or more, of you wanted to see a descendant of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader “come full circle” and repeat his grandfather’s mistakes.

There was no way that fans were going to let you do that to Luke. Even Lucas wouldn’t let you do that. Anakin Solo was too obvious a choice; he had been named for his grandfather. If you used him, it would be expected. Yet another reason to “strike” him out of the expanded universe. Any children Luke had would have to continue his legacy, not Vader’s. That left Jacen.

To complete the “full circle” angle, a member of his family had to face off with Jacen and either turn him back to the light or kill him. You opted for the latter. Seriously? But I guess you thought that your “circle” had to end differently than it began, didn’t you? Luke turned his father. It would be too cliché to have Jacen turned to the light the way Vader had been.

So you sent his older twin Jaina to take him out. When she does Jacen “makes amends” by warning his girlfriend Tenel-Ka that she and their daughter, Alanna, are in danger from poison gas. We’re never even told for sure which side of the Force Jacen joined in death. You made it pretty clear which side he was on in life.

You never read any of the other writers’ stories before starting your own, do you? Did Jaina even cry, at least in private, after killing her brother? More to the point, the whole incident seems to put her in the territory of the Dark Side, but she doesn’t act like she’s turned away from the Jedi order. Yet. I’m sure that someone has a plan to change that soon; what with her starting a resistance movement against Galactic Alliance ruler Daala (did the galaxy get amnesia? I don’t see them exactly jumping to elect her in a landslide considering how she nearly wrecked the New Republic). Is Jaina even going to live long enough to have children of her own? Aside from Alanna, it appears that the Solo line is pretty well sunk.

This is preposterous to me. Killing Jacen and Anakin robs readers and fans of a lineage of heroes continued from their original favorites. The Solo family had a great chance to grow and expand. As for the stories that could have followed the extended family – talk about endless possibilities!!

But now that’s practically gone.

Han, Leia, and most importantly Luke (since he’s the one who taught all three Solo children how to be Jedi and Jacen repaid him by killing his wife) didn’t deserve this. We, the readers and fans of the expanded universe, didn’t need this.

This was unnecessary, fellow writers. Totally and completely unnecessary.